A warm corner in Menston

This job is a lesson in letting materials do the talking. The ACR Woodpecker 5 Plus is a compact, honest multifuel stove, and on its own it is understated. Set into a natural limestone fireplace, with an antique matt black granite hearth beneath it, it becomes the centre of the room: the pale stone lifts the black stove forward, and the textured granite grounds the whole composition.

The 5 Plus earns its place on performance too: a 5kW nominal output with a wide 2 to 8kW working range, a broad window with a strong airwash, and the flexibility to burn seasoned logs or authorised smokeless fuels. For a Wharfedale family room that runs the fire most winter evenings, that range means gentle shoulder-season fires and proper January heat from the same appliance.

Every installation we complete follows the same disciplined path this one did: the free home survey to size the stove and read the chimney, the flue brought up to standard, the hearth and surround set level and true, then commissioning, a first burn and the HETAS certificate with Building Control notified. The visible craft in this photograph, the shadow gaps, the level lines, the surround meeting the wall cleanly, is what the invisible process produces.

Natural limestone needs careful handling and a properly supported fit, and a granite hearth of this size is set, not simply laid, so it stays perfect underfoot for decades. Materials like these reward an installer who treats them as joinery rather than delivery items.

Menston sits in the band of stone-built villages between Ilkley and Leeds, and rooms like this one are everywhere along the valley: solid, well-proportioned, and made for a fireplace with real presence. The same recipe, an honest multifuel stove, a natural stone surround, a granite hearth, translates directly to Burley in Wharfedale, Guiseley, Otley and the villages between.

If your room leans more contemporary, the same stove sits just as happily in a painted Glasroc chamber; if it leans more traditional, an oak beam above completes the farmhouse look. The free home survey is where we hold the samples against your walls and find your version of this room.

For a limestone and granite fireplace like this, the survey starts with proportion and then moves behind the finish: room volume, stove output, chimney condition, hearth depth, surround support and how the flue will be swept later. The aim is not to copy the photograph exactly, but to keep the same discipline so the finished fireplace feels native to your room.